Howl to the Moon
by Saphyr88
Summary: The pitter-patter of tiny HAP feet visiting the New Sanctuary causes a few sleepless nights for its resident vampire. Pre-established smutty Teslen in a theoretical Season 6/7. Henry cameo.
1. Chapter 1

"If Henry's like a son to you then does that make you Tiny-Tike's Grandmother?"

She shot Tesla a withering look that did nothing to diminish his amusement. In fact he rounded the desk so he could lean his ass on her side of it, and encroach upon her workspace.

"You still want to enter my room without being shot at don't you?" she eyed him.

He was smirking – unsurprising, really. From the angle of his gaze he had a perfect view down her top, and the subtle look was still enough to raise gooseflesh along her skin.

"Well," he wheedled, leaning in close and whispering near her ear with a leer, "I do have a thing for older women."

Trying not to let on the fact that she was kinda sort of flattered by that, Helen kept a poker straight face, holding his particularly close gaze steadily even as her nipples tightened beneath her shirt. "Such a _shame_ they don't always have a thing for you," she dead panned, "otherwise you might have repopulated the vampire race _long_ ago."

He shook his head with a tut, his grin still in place though he crossed his arms against his chest, "_Helen_," he purred, tempted by the thought of tugging her leather jacket to one side, "Said it before and I'll say it again… green, is not a good colour on you."

"Nor you." She pointed out with a business-like abruptness, attempting to return to her paperwork.

"Oh sure, I'm just _so_ jealous of a babbling infant who gurgles his own spit."

She smiled, knowing that despite the protest she'd cut close to the truth – that 'babbling infant' stole her attention every second it was in the room, and Nikola had never been very good at sharing the stage.

"Really though Helen, after a whole morning cooing and tugging at its toes I would've thought you'd have been honoured by the title."

She should've known getting on with her work would be impossible with him around. Stopping, she looked up again, noting the question he was really asking, the one between the lines. He'd not only noticed how much she'd fallen in love with Henry and Erika's little boy, how much she'd loved seeing an infant again, but that melancholy of pain, that echo of what she'd lost. Fact was, Alistair was probably the closest she ever _would_ come to having a grandchild, and she loved it – loved every precious minute of having him there, and the joy on his unfettered face.

Nikola could tell from her sad, thoughtful expression that she had cottoned onto what he'd meant, even before she explained, "I suppose when you put it like that it just reminds me… that I…" she took in a deep breath and held it in, avoiding his gaze. "Reminds me of what I will never get to see: of what _Ashley_ never had the chance to become."

He watched her, closely, with compassion and understanding like a thread in his gaze leading to his heart. Then his fingers slipped into her hair, the comfort of his lips upon hers. There was no point talking it over – they both knew what she had meant, and there was nothing more to be said.

"You know," he kept close even as they parted, so that he completely filled her line of sight, "you really _do_ create too much paperwork for yourself – if I didn't know any better I'd say you were doing it on purpose."

"Oh?" she half-smiled, forgoing the pointless reiteration that unlike him she preferred to hold everyone – including herself – to account. It had already become a tired argument, "And pray tell" her voice dropped to a whisper, "_why_ would I want to do that?"

His grin was instantaneous, "Out of some misguided attempt to keep me from seducing you?"

She laughed, a little more throatily than she would've liked, because she had absolutely no intention of giving in when she had three bills to sign off and four reports to read through. "Somehow I don't think it's going to stop you from trying."

"Oh you better believe it." He whispered, making all her insides promptly flip-flop in anticipation.

"_Nikola_," she half-complained.

"Aw come on Helen," he cajoled before she could start laying down the law, "the day's practically a write off since the little bundle of fur arrived anyway – take it as holiday."

"Nikola, I don't have _time_ to take a whole day off."

He sighed and pulled a serious face. "What's the point in having lackeys-"

"We're a _team_ Nikola."

"…if they're not there to do your bidding?"

To his concern she started to smile, deviously. "Alright," she started, "as one of these _lackeys_, how about _you_ read these reports for me while _I_ soak in a _nice long bath_?" She quirked an eyebrow, rendering him speechless for a grand total of one minute as he imagined her doing so, and then realised what she'd just called him.

"Oh, so _I'm_ a lackey now?"

"Only my most useful one," she whispered, kissing him on the lips.

"So give the paperwork to Wonder-Will," he kissed her again, "and let me… demonstrate my ski-"

She kissed him to shut him up, but damn it if she wasn't starting to enjoy herself just a little too much. Especially when his hands started to wander and cup her breasts, fingers brushing over nipples at the same pace as tongues exploring the hot warmth of their mouths. She really had trouble remembering what her point had been, and when she pulled away, they were both a little breathless.

"The more you help me, the faster I'll finish." She whispered.

He cocked an eye at her, "Well I thought that was a given."

Rolling her eyes at her unintentional innuendo she pushed him gently away, "Look you can either keep pestering me and I'll be holed away in here until dinner time, or you can lend me a hand and then we can go _relax_."

He looked at her, as if he didn't believe she had the willpower to resist him if he set his mind to it. To be fair, after that little display he was probably correct in his presumptions, but he certainly did _not_ need to know that.

"How about, we print off the reports and I read them to you… in bed?"

She chuckled at that irascible grin before she'd even given it thought, but when she did, she had to wonder, why she'd never considered that one before.

0 0

It became quite apparent, to Helen at least, why she'd never attempted to read Sanctuary reports in bed, let alone in bed with Nikola. There were too many pieces of paper for a start, and this was only one of the many-paged reports – she'd insisted on doing the rest in her office. It was when dinner came and went and she was still at her desk, that she had relented to his little experiment.

Scattered all around, the pieces of A4 were starting to float into a bizarre order which wasn't helped by Nikola occasionally snatching an interesting one away, or throwing the so-called 'boring' ones to one side. Then, of course, there was the rather distracting way he was currently kissing in a line from her navel to her sternum, his fingers brushing across the skin of her sides.

They'd discovered rather quickly that she couldn't listen to him read them aloud, especially not when he'd managed to make words like seroslug sound somehow sexual.

"Nikola," she bemoaned with a sigh, rolling back her head against the stacked-up pillow and trying not to fixate on his breath, tickling skin that drew closer and closer to her breasts. She still had her bra on – thank God for small mercies.

"I do love it when you say my name like that," he grinned up at her, eyes alight with untold mischief.

"I can't keep reading the same line five times," she choked out, her eyes fluttering shut as his hands deftly rubbed across the lace of her bra. She was very glad the papers in her hand were now obscuring his line of sight – otherwise he would've teased her relentlessly for the way she'd sunk into that warm touch. "Just… let me finish this paragraph." She moaned involuntarily as he pulled the top of her bra down with his teeth, forcing her hands and the papers in them to one side so he could suck and gently nibble on her flesh. This was ridiculous, she managed to think, she'd never get anywhere if she didn't put him on ice – and fast. "Let me focus Nikola," she chastised, smacking him lightly over the head with the paper.

"Ow," he wasn't very convincing as an injured party but at least he'd stopped testing her erogenous zones for sensitivity, "I thought I _was_ helping you focus," he grinned, "Call it _motivational_."

"Mhm, I could call it something else as well. Would you mind being _motivational_ on the other side of the bed for just a little while longer?"

"Hmm, I don't know," He walked his fingers up her arm to her elbow, "The other side of the bed?" he gave her a look, settling himself between her legs and not-so-inadvertently rubbing against her, "I kinda like it here."

She gave him a no-nonsense stare that she knew he had no intention of observing, "Only if you promise to stop getting in the way of the paper," she wafted the report in his space, where they had been before he'd usurped them, forcing him to back off just slightly, down her torso.

The look in his eyes as he did so, however, was anything but resigned. Had Magnus paid attention she'd have seen instantly that Tesla had no intention of surrendering on these terms of hers. She put her head down, quickly, to consume as much as she could of the report before he found a way to distract her again… it didn't take him long.

His lips started kissing down her centre but in reverse, until he passed her navel and her skin sparked at every press of his lips. Struggling to stifle a pleased sigh, her breath hitched as she realised where he was heading. "Nikola," the warning was desperate and weak, the sensuous tone of desire breaking it down so that it sounded almost compliant. "What are you doing?"

"Getting," he grinned devilishly between kisses, "out of the way" his hands smoothing over her legs, pulling her panties down, "of your papers." His fingers ghosted along her inner thigh.

"You're not going to let me-" the sentence was consumed in the primal sound of appreciation rolling from her lungs as his chill fingers rubbed over her clitoris, soon replaced by the warm wetness of his tongue in its final kiss. The movement twisted her insides into a pleasant contortion, made her mouth dry, her hands curl into the paper, and the sheet beneath them. "…finish…" she sighed.

Long and short licks and sucks worked her into a familiar state of helpless abandon, her chest flexing with every breathy intake of air, her muscles coiling up and easing out to his unique rhythm. She let go of the paper to run her fingers through his hair, to urge him gently on and keep close. Who was she kidding; the Lotus Elk Habitat and Resources report had been a write off the moment she'd agreed to printing it.

Her legs were closing round him without her even realising it, brushing skin down his body and making him shudder. He looked up at her hazily, and her hips instantly shifted in complaint. She had no idea how much that simple touch had flooded through his nerves, made him even more impatient for her.

"Helen," he whispered huskily, his breath cooling against the trails upon her skin before kissing her thigh again and tickling her wet entry with his fingers, "quit distracting me."

"Distracting _you_!" she sighed angrily, mustering up the wherewithal to start an argument, "You're the one w- oh," she hummed at the press of his digits sliding inside of her, rapidly stroking the entirety of her sex from beginning to end. Her body was breaking out into a feverous glow, the flush of her cheeks mirrored in other parts of her creamy skin as the blood in her body rushed towards the friction.

He watched hungrily, supporting himself over and above her body by his free hand, his hips closer to hers. Her knees were rubbing aimlessly, teasingly along him as she came closer, and she was exquisite, utterly rapturous to behold: more stunning than the New York skyline at night, more scintillating than any discovery – even the one that had entwined their lives in the first place. Fixated on the beautiful sight of her he found himself aroused, to his upmost, as her back arched and her lips parted, her dark hair pooling upon the pillow as her whimpers became more and more pronounced.

The sound of her pulse fluttered, her chest vibrating with a hum that was half-way between sigh and moan, everything about her fluctuated, and he couldn't resist. Without warning he plunged into her, sheathing himself deeply and ushering a cry from her lips as it sent her over the edge. Instinctively reaching for his shoulders and neck, she pulled herself closer into his embrace, catching her breath as all her body spasmed with pleasure and clenched around him.

Daring to open her eyes she took in his tremulous, if slightly cocky, smile and laughed, kissing him deeply as her genius guided her hips to a new beat – one that was languorous and insistent. Their chests brushed against each other, skin on skin, as his fingers finally wrangled the fabric of her bra away. His first instinct was to slice through it with his claws but Helen had already voiced her disapproval of this method in anything but the most desperate of situations.

Desperate was probably the last word to describe this sensation; the gentle pressure building, inflaming them deep and hard. If it were stakes at a poker table, they were all in – lips and tongues moulding new paths, hands smoothing ceaselessly across flesh. His fingernails were trying to creep out into their fully vampiric form, failing only through his sheer determination not to puncture the swell of her ass into which they were currently pressed.

All the while she moved for him, working him up as surely as his hands had her, twisting and shifting to elicit a primal growl from his throat. He'd given up the higher ground, and all control with it. She was the one in command now, her hands making his neck and back flood with static-like jolts that joined the ones darting from lower parts of his anatomy as he thrust inside her. They were both beginning to pant with the exertion, sweat forming as their world closed in, onto the intense swell of heat and electricity starting to crackle between them. It shorted-out their synapses in one long, glorious rush, sweeping through Helen, then Nikola, as he came inside of her and called out her name.

Between the foggy tingling of the afterglow Helen, rather cheekily, wondered whether he'd ever gotten in trouble for calling out the wrong name before. Even during their twentieth-century trysts he'd had a tendency to sigh, moan or gasp it out before the end, the sound of his overwhelming want accompanying her, as she stepped out of reality and into whatever pleasure-melted haze they had brought her to. This time, it was absolute bliss.

Even shuddering still from the force of that pleasure Nikola was holding her in his arms, though every muscle wanted to liquefy and puddle onto the bed, cuddling. Still inside of her, as their bodies slowly cooled, he was roused from his state of nirvana by the gentle press of her lips on his cheek, before she nuzzled into the base of his neck. He turned his head, ever so slightly, but he couldn't see her face.

Contenting himself with brushing his hand through her long dark hair, he could feel the growing need to say how much he loved her; let her know that what they had wasn't a trick, or an indulgence, but _real_. It sat in the upper part of his chest, waiting to come out, but something caught his breath, holding down his tongue. He couldn't quite place it, though it felt worryingly familiar, and desperate not to lose the happiness of the moment, he pushed that sensation to the back of his mind – alongside all the other thousands of idiosyncrasies which made up his character.

Perhaps she had sensed something though, because softly she put a hand to his chest and pulled apart just enough to look him in the eye. That caring gaze and wonderful, cheery smile drawing him down to the sheets to crawl between them and rest, entangled together for a while at least, before one of them needed a little more space to get comfy. She tucked herself against him, sliding her leg between his as he lay on his side, cocooning her in his embrace. Her palms had found a place around his waist, her head resting just beneath his chin. He could smell the scent of her shampoo, exotic and spiced, soothing him.

Then the crying started. Not Helen's, the baby down the hallway in HAP-central. She reacted to it though, lifting up her head a little to figure out what it was. The distinct peal of its little lungs had clearly roused maternal instincts, despite the fact that the sound was in no way loud to her human ears. For Tesla it was an insufferably incessant screech. She smiled at his grimace, rubbing a hand over his chest and patting him gently in understanding. God what would he be like if he ever had to look after one himself?

"Enrico's been showing him _The Howling_ hasn't he?" He shook his head dryly, sighing as censoriously as if he'd caught Henry doing something incorrectly in the lab, "Showing horror films to an infant, so _irresponsible_…"

Helen laughed, eying his knowingly flawed witticism, "I doubt Alistair would understand the meaning of it all even if he had Nikola."

"Urgh, I don't care, they should just find a way to make it stop." He buried his face into her shoulder, and murmured with appreciation as she stroked the back of his head.

"I don't know why _you're_ so worried;" she sighed, making him look back at her, "I'm the one who actually sleeps out of the two of us and now I have to get up in the morning to finish reading that report."

He grinned at that, pulling her close again and kissing her on the lips as the squirt's endless squall continued on into the night.

* * *

**Author's Note**: Hope you enjoyed that Teslen fans! :D There will be more – I promise – and a sweet cameo from papa wolf.

**DISCLAIMER**: I do not own, nor lay any claim to the characters of Sanctuary, or their world. This is not generating any profit, and is purely a reflection of how awesome the show is! :D


	2. Chapter 2

"Oh, hey Tesla."

He didn't respond, only the faintest, slowest, most disparaging glance out of the corner of his eye. Henry instantly recognised this as his pissy-mood-face, and thought to give the vampire a wide berth as he moved to pick up his pad. Then he noticed the look had morphed into something else, and paused a moment. It wasn't that bitter concentration on a pressing scientific problem, nor the despondent depression of failure, or the knotted frustration of humility… it was something altogether _new_. If he had to guess, Henry would've pegged it as confusion.

Instantly the HAP's brow knotted with unbidden concern, and because this was friendly, caring, Henry, he just couldn't _not_ ask… "Hey, er… are you okay?"

An accusing glare flashed irritably at him, "No I am not okay. Not after an entire night of tortuous wailing echoing out of the vocal chords of your _spawn_." He threw the metallic object he'd been fiddling with disdainfully onto the side and started to pace.

Henry's expression hardened at the barb, feeling instantly defensive over little Alistair – the only thing stopping him complaining was the fact that Tesla hadn't finished his tirade.

"I mean really Heinrich, did you _have_ to subject us all to the parental experience?"

"Oh I'm sorry," Henry jumped in flatly, "did he interrupt your little love nest, or your beauty sleep?"

The vamp didn't react with the knee-jerk glare and snarl he'd expected. In fact, he could've sworn Tesla had sighed as he looked away, one hand on a hip and his shoulders slumped. Only then did his hard stare land on Henry, pointedly not saying a thing until the werewolf almost felt guilty for having said anything. Almost, mind: this was Tesla after all. All the crap he'd put up with the few years he'd known him the least the vamp could do was take it in return.

"You and the doc…" _fight_? They were always fighting; it was part of the game. How else could he say it? They'd been in and out of each other's beds for months now. Never on a regular footing, but everyone knew what was going on… or at least thought that they did. Neither of them were particularly subtle, but nor were they very talkative about private matters, and Tesla, well gee, the man lived and breathed for secret motives. So curious, now, that his distress was so apparent.

"This is serious isn't it?" Henry asked. No jokes now, but offering to lend a hand, "What did you do?"

"Oh sure, because it always has to be _my_ fault."

Henry pulled a face, before realising how it sounded and redressing the point, "Look dude, I'm not getting at you… just trying to help."

He hissed a sigh, hand running nervously through his hair as he prepared to admit something intensely personal. Why, exactly, he was going to do so to _Henry_ he still wasn't quite sure, and really didn't want to consider… "It's not what I've done… it's what I can't do."

The vulnerable look in his eyes was bizarre to the younger man, to say the least.

"Which is…" he prompted.

Tesla flopped down into a chair, finally bringing all movement to a halt, head leaning on his arm as his fingers rubbed temples. The look on his face was grim, with a hint of despair, and a modicum of sheepishness to boot. For the longest while Henry didn't think he was going to say anything, and when he did it was pretty quiet.

"Tell her how much I love her."

Henry's jaw nearly dropped off its hinges, but there wasn't a hint of irony in Tesla's voice. He'd pretty much shied away from the entire admission, which just left the HAP even more gobsmacked. Ever since they'd met, the young werewolf had always wondered, honestly, truly, whether he _really_ cared and now… from his own mouth. It was hard for Henry to reconcile the man in front of him to the one who always seemed to put a desire for one-up-man-ship ahead of any humane emotion known to man. He crossed his arms, leaning back against a table and considering the predicament Tesla had just proposed.

"So… what's the problem? Why can't you just say it?"

"I just can't, okay?" Tesla gestured angrily, hands splayed, "You live over a hundred years – you know someone for over a hundred years – and things get a little complicated." _Or you get shot at_, Nikola added mentally; feeling no desire to clue junior in on details about Rome which Magnus herself had clearly neglected to share with the class.

"How?" Henry argued, and Tesla instantly rolled his eyes, "Way I see it, things couldn't be any simpler."

"And what if she doesn't feel the same Henri?" he stared defiantly at him, "What then?"

He shrugged, "You go back to where you were?"

He shook his head with the most severe expression, "Trust me, I couldn't, even if Helen could."

Again, Henry's eyebrows shot up.

"Oh don't look so surprised," Tesla groused bitterly, "is it really so hard for you to imagine?"

"What, you giving a crap? Yeah, colour me surprised Tesla, you haven't exactly fostered a reputation for being particularly sensitive to anyone-"

"Well I'm not, but this isn't just anyone – is it?"

Henry let out a long breath, "Dude, what can I say? If things don't go the way you want them to, the only person cutting you off will be yourself."

That, of course, was the problem. Tesla didn't know if he could handle the disappointment, the pity, or whatever else might lay in her response. Always, except for that one time in Rome, (and let's face it, that wasn't exactly the most rational period of his existence,) he had held back from admitting the depths of his feelings for her. Knowing, somehow, that once he did so everything would change – and maybe not for the better. Or worse, nothing would change at all.

He had only to remember the wrench her look of shock had taken to his heart when he'd said it in the catacombs. When she'd given her reply in a bullet and he'd fought against the sudden pang of rejection with irony and bravado. It had only served to hide the surprisingly overwhelming sense of genuine disappointment which – after sixty years – he had been unprepared for. He'd expected her to baulk at the notion, but what he hadn't anticipated was how much _he_ still cared.

It taught him to fear, once again, the admission of his deepest, most intense emotions. Reminding him, as it did, that it was never wise to let on just how important someone was to you, lest it tear them away.

"Seriously, if I were you, I'd just tell her already. The doc's never once written you off, even after all the crap you put her through." He didn't seem to like the assertion but Henry was unapologetic, "What? It's true and you know it is." He started counting on his hand, "The Cabal, creating college-brat vamps, working for SCIU-"

"Yeah okay buster, I got the picture."

"You really think actually telling her you care for her, finally showing your appreciation for all she's done for you, is what's going to send Magnus running for the hills?"

He sighed disparagingly, but not because he didn't see Wolfgang's point, he just didn't entirely agree. Helen was an incredibly loyal person, always trying to do right by people, put them on the right path. She'd have done the same for anyone at the Sanctuary, wouldn't she? Admitting his true affections, however, was a different ballgame to all of that. Helen's heart was the most guarded part of her, the most vulnerable. Ever since 1888 she had preferred to sidestep anything close to romantic love, before it sidestepped her first – with lies, or metamorphosis, or knives against the throats of East End whores.

"She even re-vamped you," Henry continued, making his strongest case, before double checking the electronic note-pad in his hand and retreating from the field. Playing agony aunt to a man about five times his age wasn't the most comfortable of situations, "That's gotta count for something."

_An unwillingness to let go of the past,_ Tesla snarked internally – though the words Henry had left him to chew on had struck a chord. It wasn't so much the fact that she had re-vamped him, than the way she'd done it. Even whilst bleeding into his internal organs that wild desperation on her face had registered deep in his psyche, returning to him long after he'd been healed. The way she'd clutched to the first possibility, determined that it would solve everything – the undertone of actual fear in her voice as she commanded him to stick with her, not to leave her alone. Nikola could never forget it, and had spent a goodly long while mulling it over on the edge of sleep, in those solitary weeks that had followed. He'd been slow to realise, distracted by his own metamorphosis as much as the myriad of signals she kept sending. More times than he could count with Helen Magnus he could've slapped himself for missing his chances – not for the odd leer or flirty banter, somehow he never seemed to miss those, but to comfort her, to be honest about how he felt, to actually make a difference.

In the quiet of the lab, as the sediment of his insecurities settled, he was left with the same unavoidable fact. He had two options – the third he had no desire to repeat. He could leave, like he always did, and avoid facing up to his own agonising ineffectiveness, putting him back to square one whenever their paths inevitably crossed again, or speak up, as Wolfie had suggested. His stomach grew leaden, knowing now what he hadn't in '29 – that their immortality wasn't quite as assured, their meeting again not as inevitable as they had once thought.

God damn it. He cricked his neck, trying to unwind his tightened muscles; this was precisely why he'd spent a lifetime _avoiding_ love and every expression of it.

0 0

The New Sanctuary Library was state of the art, replete with touch-screen computers imbedded into tables and moveable shelf-stacks. Every surface was sleek, bar the portrait of Gregory which hung above the modern zen-style fireplace. It was the books which kept it from feeling too much like a government lobby, and the long windows at the far end, which filled the place with light and all the green from outside. Being high up, it was a stunning view of the grounds, and one Nikola had often found himself gazing out of. For all its modern fixtures, the library still seemed to him one of the most comfortable places in the entire complex.

Which wasn't a great surprise considering how much time Helen spent in here; refreshing her over-burdened memory from books which still hadn't made it onto the computer system. Books which were often older than them both.

She was in her favourite spot – positioned in the middle, so that her father was looking down protectively over her shoulder, and she could look up out the window in a glance. He knew she'd heard him come in but she was ignoring him, trying to reach the end of the paragraph before she opened her mouth. For once he didn't disturb her, letting her get to the convenient spot and slide in a bookmark.

From the looks of the matted, yellowing page it was Gregory's notes on the Pleskidara… whatever one of those were. Her father's field-study sketch resembled something that might've stumbled out of a bad alien b movie.

"Brushing up on the local fauna?"

She nodded happily, "Will, Maga and I are heading out to Upper Mongolia in… 4 hours."

"Trying to get out of the house Helen?" he teased, "All you need do was ask – I could've taken you somewhere so much nicer. Paris, perhaps?"

He knew as well as she did that being up on the surface at all, for any reason, risked blowing her genius deception in the water, and nullifying the sacrifice of her friends. So she ignored the comment, and focused on elaborating upon her news, "There've been reports that Pleskidara have been sighted far beyond their Siberian heartland."

"And they're starting to argue with the locals over who gets the nicest view?"

"Something like that," she half-smiled, brushing a loose strand of hair out of her face and standing from her chair, "though what's really interesting is that the _Cordyceps Siberienses_ doesn't extend into the areas they're being reported in,"

Tesla had zoned out already. Fixed on another mission entirely, he came closer until she could've reached out and touched him, openly ogling her as he did so – particularly the length of her legs that were on show, and the black high heels that had his mind drop into the gutter almost instantly.

If it showed on his face Magnus gave no indication that she'd noticed, still caught up in the intellectual curiosity she was relaying, "so they should be able to come to some kind of harmonious balance with the local ecological system – namely humans."

"Admit it, you're just sick of tripping over children's toys and having to listen to it squeal."

She laughed, finally feeling his prolonged and lustful stare, "You're not coming, if that's what you're after."

He pouted momentarily, though mostly because it was expected – he didn't really have any desire to traipse through Mongolian steppe after little green men… not with Wilheim and the feathered friend in tow at any rate.

She put a hand to his chest eying him with mock discernment, her smile undiminishing as his hand automatically went for her hip, "Oh what's the matter Niki – can't handle one little baby?"

He stared at her for a moment, as though he couldn't quite decide on the several lines that had instantly sprung to mind – his smile caught in the cross-fire half-way between grin and smirk, disbelief and determination to be devious. "Says the woman leaving for _Asia_," he murmured closely.

She chuckled, far more turned on by the low tones of his voice than she would've anticipated. Maybe it had something to do with their shrinking proximity… or that look in his eyes. Their noses were almost touching now, they were so close, and he was gazing at her in an open way that made her skin come alive. As though she were something special, sacred almost – she sort of felt as though she shouldn't have caught him looking at her like that, with his heart scrawled so close to the surface.

_He should just say it_, he thought to himself, _right now_, whilst she was happy, and predisposed to hear him. It wasn't hard, just three words. I. Love. You. His leer had quickly dissipated into something more genuine as the clamour inside his skull grew to a dull roar – _just tell her!_

"In _four_ _hours_," She whispered seductively, her head tilting to one side, lips pursed as she leaned in.

If she kissed him he would never find the strength to say it.

"Helen," he moved his head before it could land, pulling away just enough that he could look her in the eye, his hands clutching her arms and holding her in place. He could feel his will slipping, as she searched silently for his motivation, as her mouth hovered close by – offering the less complicated, physical expression of something which had never been uttered, but always understood.

"Nikola?" she questioned softly, sensing he was at the precipice of saying something important, and not necessarily beneficial to himself. Potentially something she wasn't going to want to hear.

"I…" now he just felt silly. Grand declarations – who was he kidding, he wasn't a sixteen year old, and he wasn't some lothario smoothly seducing her with that over used phrase. There she was, looking all sexy, and ruffled, and all he wanted to do was taste her inviting, half-parted lips, mould their bodies together until he could touch every inch of her. He darted into her mouth, catching her by surprise, and insistently nudging it open to accept his own searching tongue.

She moaned; more than just a little turned on by the hunger of it, the way his hands roamed across the fabric of her grey dress as though it were not there at all. They didn't often make love two nights in a row – he wouldn't let her get up in the mornings, she hogged the duvet, he would be engrossed in the lab until late at night, she would be knee-deep in some abnormal crisis – life, and their own temperaments, made it unusual. Yet her skin grew heavy at the thought of it, at the taste of him, at the memory of last night, and this morning. She felt herself craving him, eager to spend her last few hours before deployment entwined rather than engrossed in some dry tome.

Breathlessly she pulled away for air, smiling naughtily as she snapped the book on the table shut without taking her eyes off of him, and took his hand. He looked at her with that typically Tesla mix of unconcealed want and timorous uncertainty which, even now, with all but an open invitation to her bed, he could never quite shake. It was absolutely adorable in someone as egocentric as Nikola.

"Let's… move this to the bedroom," she murmured near his cheek.

She could feel him smile, that toothy, wolfish grin, "Well, if the lady _insists_."

Shaking her head she tugged gently on his tie towards the door, "I certainly do. Especially for what I've got in mind," eyebrow quirked she let his tie slip through her fingers and led them through the hall.

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**Author's Note**: Only one more chapter after this my friends, it tis but a short and sweet foray into the post-Season-4-Sanctuary. Hope you enjoyed Mr Foss' little moment. :) Made me wish I wrote Henry in more often, I miss him. Thank you to you lovely folks following this story! Bonus points for anyone eagle-brained enough to remember the species Helen's going after in Upper Mongolia from the show.


	3. Chapter 3

When she'd dropped her dress to the floor at the foot of the bed he could've sworn every part of his anatomy froze to a dead stop – bar one crucial section. She took him by the tie again, leading him to her like a naughty schoolboy in a highly inappropriate situation. Beneath her heavy, heated gaze he felt her fingers tugging the fabric loose, sliding it from beneath his collar with a devious smirk. She grew distracted, momentarily, by the way his Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed, tossing her head to one side in a way which flicked her hair, exposing her neck. Nikola quickly reached to cradle her head, kissing her on that inviting pulse-point as she carried on undressing him. She leant her cheek against him, shivering as he teased with the edge of his teeth, indulging in the thin line of his hunger.

It wasn't until he felt her hands slipping his buckle undone, that he became aware of his surroundings again… and promptly realised her bra was still on.

She knew that grin before she even felt the click of it undoing with nothing more than a magnetic tug, or felt the odd vibrating sensation of his powers sweeping along her body. Determined not to be outdone she raised an eyebrow at him, undoing his trousers and stealing his speechless, lustful expression with a deep, searching kiss.

He moaned as she took possession of him, pressing her close against his body, burying his hands in her hair – but she had to breathe sometime. Gasping she smiled alluringly up from her bowed head, biting her bottom lip in anticipation. He had half a mind to pass a teasing comment, but then she moved, shakily, drawing her nails down his sides and moving down his body.

All his wires overloaded at the same time – his brain officially shutting down as he realised where this was going. She never took her eyes off of him, chuckling at his dumbstruck expression as her hands wrapped around the length of him and drew over it, guiding him to her lips. There was a God. He watched with wonderment as long as he could, eyes closing reflexively at the sensation of her warm mouth enclosing upon him. In a world where Helen Magnus willingly went down on him there was definitely a God.

She smirked at the exceedingly appreciative and not particularly smooth noise emitted from his throat, delighting in the texture of his hard swollen cock as she unpicked his self-assurance, and left behind nothing but the anxious man beneath. Running her tongue over the soft skin, digging fingers into his flank, he trembled. Fingers nesting in her hair as he clung onto the last vestiges of control, steadying himself against the bed and feeling his inner vampire edge closer and closer to the surface.

It burned, twisting and turning his muscles, his nerves, his blood, until he couldn't hold on anymore. Nails grew into tiny claws, teeth started to sharpen, voice growled out with all the gravely overtones of an ancient race, vocalising the sheer impossible ecstasy of it. Exhilarated, to the edge of every extremity, his enthusiasm was infectious. Even as he shakily regained his balance and his human self, it seeped from him, as his seed had seared down her throat barely moments ago. Helen eyed him, raising her eyebrow at the sight of his vampire traits in retreat and feeling the low twist of her body at the thought of those claws having been so close to drawing blood. She couldn't hold back the nervy, tremulous laugh at his adorably dorky smile, or the sense of achievement at having wrought such pleasure in him.

"_Hello_ vampy," she murmured cheekily, managing to stand, just, by supporting herself against him.

Entirely speechless, for once, his expression still managed to convey precisely what was on his mind: a delirious mixture of delight, adoration… and intent, which caught the air in her throat.

Roughly tugging off her bra his mouth sealed onto hers, raising gooseflesh with the abrasiveness of it, her breasts tightening to points as he pressed her close against his chest. She moaned at the feel of their naked bodies against each other, skin on skin, kissing him briefly against the cheek as she breathed, before devouring him again and pushing onto his slight frame.

Taken off guard he didn't have time to realise he'd land safely on the bed, though that was precisely what happened. No sooner did he hit the sheets with a startled, appreciative exclamation muffled in her mouth, than she did scramble on top of him. Trapping him beneath those sexy thighs, kissing him, as his work-roughened hands explored and teased lines in half-intimate places and elicited purrs from low in her vocal chords.

When she felt his erection press against her again she moaned aloud, lost in the anticipatory memory, and very thankful for that abnormal refractory period of his. Her body felt as hot as it looked beneath his hands, radiating above him with all that energy. Nikola couldn't help the cocksure jaunt to his mouth as he pressed against her entrance and found she was wet, perfectly ready to take him.

He kissed her a little more tenderly, slowing her movements down to the low throb of his heart, beating for her, and only her; the long, lush exploration of his hands down her shoulders, across her thigh, gathering her up as he pushes in. For the second time she moans, and it's utterly intoxicating, filling up his world, overloading his senses with her scent, her sounds, the feel of her clenching around him, sliding off, and sliding on.

She goes slack under the pleasure, pressing herself into his embrace as it ripples beneath her slick skin. Waves of spasms where her muscles are no longer her own, where a puppet master now pulls her strings and plucks her chords in the most deliciously sinful way imaginable. He glides within her, holding her together, melding them into one flesh like metals sinking into each other beneath a flame. The intensity of it makes her eyes water, hitches her breath as he makes love to her – as though she were the centre of something precious, and rare, and beautiful.

Oh but she means everything to him, or he would like her to. All those years spent keeping himself apart, willing her to look at him this way, because she was the only one who mattered. He'd decided that long ago.

"I love you." He whispered heatedly, meaningfully, in her ear, succumbing barely a second later to a moan as he pulsed inside of her, ready for release.

There was no mistaking it. It wasn't mumbled, but purposefully, wilfully, uttered; and its honesty pierced through unexpectedly to mingle with the pleasure, rushing out as he spilled inside her core. The euphoria heightened in lucid golden streaks, bold brush strokes of honeyed sensations coating her mind and body, feeling closer, feeling that exhilarating tug on her heart to give up, to let go, to free fall into forever. She cried out, the words like phantoms, ghostly, yet lingering in her rapid pulse rate, her breathlessness… the blood-darkened eyes that filled her line of sight when she dared to open her own.

Gazing at him, she caressed his face so he couldn't turn away, couldn't hide from her. She kissed his forehead, then his lips, nose brushing against his as she moved to whisper in his ear.

"I know you do," she gasped out.

No matter what he said, or did, no matter how much he unthinkingly hurt her, this much she knew to be true. Who else knew her as well as he did, who listened to her even when he didn't want to acknowledge she was right, believed in her when others voiced their doubts – wanted her, mind body and soul, without compromise. No one else knew just how to distract her from the obscenity of eternity, and she had truly felt his absence in those hundred odd years of isolation, an absence she'd not really acknowledged in the sixty years preceding Rome but thinking about it... had she not been lonely then? Had that not been what had coaxed her to bring Ashley into the world – deprived of John, and Nikola, removing herself from James.

She felt him breathing in her scent determinedly, holding on and bracing himself for a broken heart: misunderstanding her tone as one of weighty sadness at being unable to reciprocate. So when she uttered, "I think I love you too," against his ear his heart practically leapt with joy, his grin so wide it might have split his face.

"You only think?" his eyebrows quirked, and instantly she could feel a smile beginning to form in the corners of her mouth, "Helen I'm disappointed, surely a couple of centuries is more than enough time to figure something like that out!"

She took him by surprise and kissed him soundly on the lips. To which he responded with searching hands and a tight embrace that had no intention of ever letting go.

0

Gradually they drifted towards sleep; even Tesla began to feel a happy kind of exhaustion, with Helen curled up beside him. He felt safe here, for the first time in the longest of times, he had a home, and not just a hotel room. So when the sound of the pip-squeaks abnormal lungs screaming through the corridors reached his ears, he tried to ignore it, he really did. It didn't take long, however, before he couldn't suffer in silence a moment longer. He sighed in annoyance, the deep breath causing Helen's head to bob where it lay against him, "You know HAP really should stand for _Henry's_ _Absent-minded_ _Parenting_!"

"He can't hear you," Helen mumbled sleepily against his chest, before realising that she was sleeping… and she didn't have _time_ to sleep. "Bloody hell," She was heading on a plane in… she checked the clock, scanning wildly to ascertain whether she had time to take a shower. Half an hour! She needed to get in there _now_.

Sitting up with her, Nikola snaked his hands around her middle, "And where do you think _you're_ going Dr Magnus?" he mumbled into a kiss on her neck.

She rolled her eyes; she couldn't help herself, "To Mongolia," she slipped out of his grasp, "I need a shower."

"Need a ha-"

"NO," she didn't even look at him as she plucked her clothes from the floor.

He started to sulk, "Oh come on…"

She meandered back to bring him a consolation kiss, barely managing to pull away again and stand on her own two feet, "Another time I promise," she smiled coyly, "but you take forever in the shower, and that's before we even factor in sex."

She was right, which was why he gawped ineffectively for long enough for her to retreat behind the bathroom door. He expelled a sigh in frustration, falling back against the pillows and doing his best to ignore the blasted baby howling at the non-existent moon. With the lulling sound of the water gushing across Helen's body hitting his ears, it was easier than he'd ever dreamed possible.

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**Author's Note**: There we are folks, nice smutty interlude finito. Now I must get back to 1912 Tesla and Helen in **The Iron Sea**! Big thanks to **gatehead81** for your kind words :D and to you lovely people faving/following this fic.


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